The Basics of Starting and Managing a Business What You Need to Learn

Today we are going to talk about the basics of building a business. These will work for any business. The basics of business don’t change.

The first basic we are going to discuss is selling a business or product. You are in the sales business. Many people believe if they have a business card that they are a business person. Until you have money coming in, you are not in business. Many people don’t want to hear that.

The first basic is you have to have a product or service and you have to be making some money. Until you do those things it is just mental masturbation. You’re just playing around. There are some people who have been playing around for years.

The second thing is cash flow. If you want to be a successful businessperson, focus on making some money and developing cash flow. Forget about the logo. Forget about the app. Forget about click funnels. Forget about all that stuff. You have to decide if I put this thing out, can I make money.

Let’s say you’re putting this phone out there for $60. That’s called making a direct offer. It can either be through a Craigslist posting, an eBay posting or from your Facebook page. That is the fastest and easiest way for someone with no experience to make money.

If you go to your grandparents’ house and offer to clean out their basement for free if you can have everything they really don’t want and you put that stuff up for sale every day, you’ll make some money. Direct response is the best way to go when you have no experience and you don’t know what you are doing. Pick something and just start making offers and making money.

A lot of people don’t want to do that because it is selling. People don’t want to be a salesperson. They want to put it out there, but they don’t want to talk to anybody. Was that how you got your husband or wife? Is that how you got your job promotion? Is that how you bought your house? Is that how you bought your car? Is that how you graduated from college?

That whole idea that you are going to sit back and let the money come to you is unrealistic. No fortune has ever been built that way. No new nation has ever been established that way. Nothing has been established that way. So, why do you think you’re going to make a lot of money by trying to do that? Seriously, where does this idea come from? You can get some responses, but you don’t get the fast and vigorous responses you would get if you would just stop playing the games. If you want to turn up the heat on your income, you must be very direct. You must be actively going after it.

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Question: What were the steps you took to learn to build websites and online marketing? There’s too much noise out there. I’m using WordPress and Gator as my host.

Answer: I learned how to do this stuff from selling junk. Every day I was in the marketplace. I was looking at what people were buying. I was watching my competitors. I had years and years of training in direct response marketing.

Every day I was writing an ad for Craigslist. Every day I was selling something. Every day I was writing copy for eBay. Every day I was writing copy for Amazon. For years I was putting stuff out in the marketplace to sell it. So, when I came to YouTube and the world of blogging, I did not come in naïve. I inherently knew that people were not going to read my blog if they had no interest. I knew I had to make interesting videos for people to watch them. Many people don’t come in with these expectations and they are all butt hurt and mad when things don’t go well.

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WordPress is a tool. Shopify is a tool. YouTube is a tool. Facebook is a tool. You’ve got somebody who can take this cell phone and start making money, because they have moneymaking skill sets. Then you have someone else who can have this office and computers who will go out of business in a week because they have none of these skills. So, what you need to do is learn basic marketing and sales skills, then everything else will fall into place.

Another basic principle of business is you must realize you are in sales. You can’t have the mindset that you are going to settle for what you can get. You have to approach sales from the standpoint that you are going to deliver something of value to your customer. You have to think, I’m going to save them time. I am going to save them money. I’m going to make them happy. I’m going to give them comfort. I’m going to give them luxury.

Another basic is you have to ask for the money. Many people are afraid to ask for the money. If you can’t do this, you will dramatically limit your business.

When you start your business, your business needs more than you do. You must have another source of income. The business income must go back into the business. I know that’s hard to hear.

Do you want to be successful long-term? If you do, you may have to work very hard for two to five years and not make a lot of money on the personal side. I knew someone who was making $2million a month and was living on $100K a year.

Cash flow to your business is oxygen. You have to set your expectations that it will likely take you from two to five years to build your business. You have to keep in mind that before I came to YouTube, I had a decade of success to build on with a lot of 12-hour days.

YouTube was easy because I was working eight to twelve-hour days. It was easy because my perspective about hard work was so different than the average person’s. Sunday is a work day for me.

You have to pick a number to live on. Even if you bring in more money, you should live on that number as you build your business. If you adjust your lifestyle as your income goes up, you’re going to be in a world of hurt when your income goes down.

You know what managing a business encompasses? It is making your customers and employees happy. If you can manage those, you can get rich. It’s hard.

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